Retailers Rushed To Hire For Holidays, A Sign Of Tight Labor Market

Retailers are scrambling to hire holiday-season workers despite an unusually early start on recruiting this year, creating a collision among employers for temporary help in a tight labor market. Data from job-search site Indeed.com shows retailers, and the warehouse and logistics firms they compete with for seasonal labor, started searching for temporary workers in August, a month earlier than in recent years. This suggests retailers and other firms “anticipate stronger consumer demand and expect that it will be harder to find the people they want to hire,” said Indeed economist Jed Kolko. Last year, more than one in four retail workers hired in the fourth quarter of 2015 started their jobs in October, the highest share on records back to the 1930s. Companies and analysts say a number of trends are converging. The holiday-shopping season is starting before Halloween for many consumers, rather than the traditional day after Thanksgiving. There are fewer workers available, due to unemployment holding around 5% for the past year. And retailers are facing tougher holiday-hiring competition from logistics firms and distribution centers, which have grown along with e-commerce. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.